


Denial of Service

by stopeats



Category: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: Gen, Not sure what I'm doing, bashed this out in a day, but it was fun to write, which means I'm doing it correctly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:15:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26952733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stopeats/pseuds/stopeats
Summary: Two rogue SecUnits get put on the same contract. One is convinced no one suspects a thing. The other is convinced the humans already know it's rogue. Both are wrong.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 69





	Denial of Service

My first assignment with a functioning governor module and I couldn’t have looked less suspicious. HubSystem? Hacked. The other SecUnit? Clueless. The gaggle of humans trying to set up some sort of power plant over the top of an active volcano? None the wiser. They scurried about the platform, awkward in the bulky heat protection, taking measurements and doing other no doubt very important things under my watchful eye. Had any of them asked me my opinion on the setup, I’d have happily suggested some sort of running belay system to, for instance, prevent a trip in the ungainly suits from leading to sublimation in the pit of lava beneath us (sublimation, I knew from my single health module, was bad for humans—bad for SecUnits too).  
  
No one, of course, had asked for my opinion, so I had positioned myself at the very edge of the platform, where I had the best chance to grab one of them if they slipped. The other SecUnit was being used as a laborer, technically against protocol, but it didn’t seem to mind. Granted, it was in full armor, faceplate opaqued, coms muted, so it could’ve been cursing them out and we’d never know.  
  
I kind of doubted that. An unhacked governor module tended to frown upon cursing the clients.

\\\

They knew. The way Fari looked at me, I could just tell: they knew. As requested, I had lugged a box of batteries to the heat shunters near the edge of the platform. (Why were we unloading the batteries first, I hear you ask? Because none of the humans understood the finer details of strategic packing and someone [looking at you, Chanti] had put the batteries right at the front of the hopper instead of, I don’t know? Leaving them in the station above until we had something to plug them into? Just a thought…) When I’d put them down, though, I’d made a critical mistake—I’d looked at Chanti. (I was already side-eyeing her mentally; what was I supposed to do? Not do it in real life?) And when I straightened, I saw Fari giving me a funny glance.  
  
Funny glances are never reassuring at the best of times. From Fari, the lone technical systems expert on the team, they were downright grim.  
  
I did not scurry away. I’ve had a hacked governor module too long for rookie mistakes like that. I didn’t stare at them either, just let my gaze drift across the platform and back to the hopper, as if charting out the most efficient route back (probably the same route I’d taken to get there). Then, without a word, I returned to pick up another box of batteries, even bigger than the first.  
  
That’s when the scuffle started.

//

So remember that running belay I mentioned? Fenix was probably wishing for one right about now. Right before my eyes, I watched him slip on the corrugated iron platform. He flailed, trying to grab a safety rail, like the company he worked for had bothered to pay for safety rails over a pit of lava.  
  
I suppose they’d done one better—they’d paid for me.  
  
Quick as I could in armor, I snatched his hand. His sigh of relief was loud enough, I heard it through my helmet, and his face went all weird and pale. Humans could change colors, I’d noticed, but only at weird times. Maybe I should ask HubSystem about that sometime.  
  
I checked for the location of the other SecUnit to see if they were close enough to grab Fenix’s free arm or maybe a leg, but they’d booked it to the hopper as soon as they’d dropped off their first box of batteries. I didn’t bother pinging them for assistance, just tightened my grip and prepared to haul Fenix back up onto the platform.  
  
I’m not sure why he kept swinging wildly—I mean, I was holding him up; I had him fully caught—but sometimes humans do strange things in emergencies. He yelled something at me but HubSystem had helpfully muted his suit’s coms when he’d fallen, to save the other workers from hearing his screams of agony as he burned, I assumed. I therefore missed his no doubt scintillating explanation for writhing about. What I didn’t miss was the way he shifted our whole center of balance when his legs kicked at the platform. I fell forwards, tried to catch myself with a hand, and found a lot of empty space.  
  
HubSystem’s command was clear: my contract instructed me to protect the humans. I needed to turn and throw him to safety, then try not to splash any lava on the other humans as I burned and drowned.  
  
This, to be completely honest, sounded kind of like a bad idea. No offense, HubSystem. So, I did the next most obvious thing: I let him go. The hand that had been holding him snatched the very edge of the platform and held tight.

\\\

Oh, that was good—not the death of Fenix; that was kind of grisly)—but no one, not even Fari, was looking my way after he fell. They swarmed the side of the platform where he’d gone over, careful not to step past the yellow safety stripes (yellow safety stripes: like fences, but useless). There was the typical screaming, babbling, questions, etc. etc. as they all tried to figure out what had happened.  
  
I took the opportunity to dip into the RAM of the one security camera in the volcano itself so I could overwrite any looks, suspicious or otherwise, Fari had sent my way. I couldn’t get them out of the hard drive without an administrator’s password, which I did not have, but I deleted all pointers to them. The data would look corrupted and anyone who couldn’t read binary (that is, any human) wouldn’t be able to find the missing chunk.  
  
Then, I unmuted myself and said, “Please back away from the edge of the platform and return to work.” Technically, HubSystem had only told me to order them back to work. I added that back away bit because I like to go above and beyond.  
  
Slowly, still gesticulating at one another, the humans returned to their tasks and I continued unloading the hopper.  
  
Catastrophe averted. For me, at least. Fenix might’ve had other feelings about the situation.

//

“SecUnit?”  
  
I nearly swiped my armor off its shelf as I spun around. I hadn’t realized humans could be that sneaky. (Should I have been monitoring all the cameras in the habitat? Technically, yes. Had I assumed one of the other two SecUnits on the contract had it covered? Also yes, and frankly, the fact that neither had warned me made me feel a bit miffed). “Yes”—subtly as I could muster, I checked their feed for a last name and title—“Coordinator Ty?”  
  
“Run diagnostics. I believe you are malfunctioning.”  
  
“Me? No…” I gave him my most non-malfunctioning-SecUnit thumbs up, which, on second thought, might’ve made things worse, SecUnits not, generally, being the thumbs up sort.  
  
“Run them now.”  
  
Right. Sure. I’d just run diagnostics. No problem. I'd erased the pointers to HubSystem's command to sacrifice myself for Fenix right after I'd climbed back onto the platform, so there was no way Ty had seen it. He probably wasn't even that suspicious. Maybe this was normal after a SecUnit accidentally let a client die. That was it; this was probably just protocol after someone died and he'd see I was functioning normally and leave me be. “I am at 99% efficiency.” He looked like he wanted more detail than that so I started my breakdown with my least suspicious parts. “My risk assessment module is at-”  
  
“Get into your cubicle. I’m going to run a side by side.”  
  
Oh. Interesting. See, here’s the thing about side by sides. A regular governor module has, in technical terms, a crap ton of code. Too much for a human to skim in a sitting. But, most of it is standardized, which means if you’ve got the presets (like, for instance, if you have access to a fancy new cubicle), you can run a side by side, and if the codes differ by, say, more than 5%, you can report the unit as malfunctioning and have it undergo a factory reset when you get off contract. This is also known as dying, which, as I hope I’ve already established, I am not super excited about. “I’m afraid you will need Dr. En to oversee such an operation, Coordinator Ty.” That sounded legit, right?  
  
It threw him off his game for a good two seconds. Then, he said, “Fine. I’ll be back, with Fari.”  
  
Cool. That sounded fun. “I await your return, Coordinator Ty.”

\\\

This day could not get any worse. Fari? Here? Running side by sides was exactly what I did not need. HubSystem had paralyzed the SecUnit who’d dropped Fenix into the lava (he had, on a boring night early in the contract, suggested a game that he called Target Practice but mostly involved me trying to dodge as he threw or fired projectiles in my direction, all to the amusement of a small gaggle of onlookers, so I did not begrudge the SecUnit that choice to let him die. It did bother me somewhat that it was now casting more suspicion on me) but I was still free to move. I could make a run for it.  
  
A run as far as the ship, which I could not fly. And then they’d know I’d hacked my governor module and it would all be over for me.  
  
No, I needed to be smarter than that. I used the backdoor I’d added to our HubSystem to look at its commands. Maybe I could tell it to tell me to go to the shuttle and make a human pilot it away. That wouldn’t look weird, right?  
  
While I was brainstorming, I did a bit of quick cleaning up. HubSystem’s data management style left—and this was the politest way I could phrase it—something to be desired. Was it too much to ask for a coherent tagging system? I wrote a quick script to sort its commands from the platform into a readable system and then froze.  
  
What was this?  
  
HubSystem had told my fellow platform SecUnit to kill itself to save Fenix, and someone—not me—had deleted the pointer to that command; I could only access it because I was riffling through its hard drive.  
  
Initial thought: _I'm not the only SecUnit with a hacked governor module on this contract?_  
  
And then: _shit, they're about to run a side by side on it._

//

Five minutes, it took Ty to bring Fari back to the storage room, and in all that time, the best plan I’d come up with went as follows:  
  
First, convince one of the other two SecUnits to let me borrow its armor.  
  
Second, convince it to wear my armor.  
  
Third, pretend to be that SecUnit.  
  
Four, let Fari and Ty run a side by side on that one’s code.  
  
Five, rejoice.  
  
Not amazing, as far as plans went, and the fact that I hadn’t come up with any convincing arguments in those five minutes rather ruined the whole thing. I went with plan B:  
  
First, stare blankly at Fari and Ty and try not to drop to 95% efficiency thinking about my imminent reset.  
  
Second, that’s it. That’s the whole plan.  
  
This plan, I executed fabulously.  
  
“SecUnit,” said Fari in a clipped accent. “Get in your cubicle.”  
  
“Yes, Dr. En.”  
  
My efficiency dropped to 94% percent.

\\\

Look, setting off the fire suppressor system may not have been my smartest move ever, but they were about to find out a SecUnit on their team was rogue and nothing is more distracting than a ton of flame retardant foam spurting out of the ceiling at high velocity.  
  
It filled the room in seconds and I switched to infrared so I could make out where the humans were. HubSystem was about to make a nuisance of itself, so I stepped in and had it order the third SecUnit on our team (I swear, if it was also rogue, I was going to blow a gasket) to sweep the humans out of the room. It did so with great zest, flinging Fari over one shoulder, Ty over the other, and booking it to safety.  
  
Great. First problem solved. Now, I needed to keep the humans from talking to each other. I’d seen CombatUnits shut the feed down before, which is all nice and impressive, if you’re into that sort of thing, but we can’t all be CombatUnits, can we? I set off an infinite loop that would fill everyone’s feeds with gibberish until someone reset it. Then, I had HubSystem tell the still-running SecUnit that the fire was near the ship and to take all the humans as far away as possible.  
  
At that point, I kind of expected the other rogue unit to, you know. Do something useful. Move, maybe. But they remained frozen, even though I’d shut off HubSystem’s (useless) paralysis order.  
  
Clearly, I was going to have to execute every part of this rescue myself.

//

“Can you fly a ship?”  
  
I started. SecUnits did not, as a rule, engage in idle chitchat, especially not during fires. “What?”  
  
“If we get to the ship, can you fly us off planet?”  
  
“The humans have a pilot.”  
  
“Yes,” it said, and I sensed a hint of exasperation in that voice. “But we don’t want to bring the humans with us, do we? Given what they might find out about you? About us?”  
  
About how we’d stood in the storage room during an emergency helping people evacuate? That was a good point—I moved towards the door to assist in the rescue.  
  
“About how you’re a rogue!” hissed the other SecUnit. “They’ll know as soon as Fari runs that side by side comparison.”  
  
Oh, right. “The ship docked on planet can’t go through wormholes. We’d be trapped in this system.”  
  
The other SecUnit cursed. “We need to kill Fari then. Ty, too.”  
  
“In cold blood?”  
  
“Do you have a better idea?”  
  
It had cursed just then. A SecUnit with a functioning governor unit couldn’t do that, which meant we were both rogue. Two rogue SecUnits—we had to be able to do something with that.

\\\

As requested, I sent the other unit the compressed packet as soon as the side by side ended, then had HubSystem order it to open and apply its contents immediately, without inspecting them first.  
  
The code we’d written as we ran about collecting humans during the fake fire drill re-hacked its governor module in a few seconds. I saw it shake itself, blink a few times as if confused, and then it must’ve assimilated the memory package because it smiled. “I can’t believe that worked.”  
  
_99% match_ , I sent it through the feed. _Fari and Ty don’t suspect a thing._ Fari had yelled at Ty for almost two minutes for wasting their time when the results had come back normal.  
  
_Thank you_ , it said. _You saved my life._  
  
Frankly, I was impressed it had willingly deleted all its post-hack memories and entrusted them to me during the scan, then let me turn on its governor module again. The thought of allowing mine to reactive made my biological bits go all wobbly, but the SecUnit hadn’t even hesitated. _Us rogues have to stick together._  
  
_Did you_ … It trailed off and pretended to look at the door to its cubicle with great interest. _Did you look at the memories, while you had them?  
_  
_Of course not._ And I hadn’t. Okay, I had really quickly checked when it had gone rogue because it acted like a total amateur, (and I’d been right; it was essentially a baby) but other than that, nothing.  
  
_Thanks._ It shut the door to the cubicle.  
  
A ping from the contract leader: now that the whole fire thing was over, they needed to get back to work, and that meant they needed two SecUnits on a hopper to help at the volcano. Technically, we were supposed to rotate so it wasn’t the same SecUnit always staying in the habitat—it prevented fatigue or something. To that end, the third SecUnit was already heading to the door, ready to report for duty.  
  
I had HubSystem stop it. _Do you want to go?_ I asked. _Together, I mean. We could_ -  
  
_Yes_ , it said, not letting me finish.  
  
All our faceplates were opaque, but somehow, I think it knew that I was smiling.


End file.
